We met SEASON OF GHOSTS twice at Metal Female Voices Fest and our conversations were always special because Sophia answered every question very honestly. Shortly before the release of their first single from the album “A Leap Of Faith”, ‘A Place To Call Home’, we recorded a podcast episode and took the time to go into more detail talk about the circumstances of the composing process and things got very personal.

Since then, the album was released and all the stuff Sophia and Sam said in the podcast could obviously befound in the album. So when they played a tour with Japanese Power Metal band Jupiter, we met again in Essen after a brilliant show!

JUPITER, SEASON OF GHOSTS, AETERNITAS, LIGHTNING @Turock

Four bands played that evening at Turock. Their styles were different and so was the audience; JUPITER, the headliner, plays power metal but the band members dress in visual kei style, so a lot of “visus” were there to see them. But also metal fans found their way to the venue.

The first act was LIGHTNING, a solo musician from Japan who played guitar and sang with virtual instrumental support. Musically, he did a really good job, but since he was all alone on stage and because of the language – Japanese English differs a lot from European English – he didn’t really get in touch with the audience. But for a warm-up, it was all good and fans of Jupiter appreciated his gig.

The second act, AETERNITAS, had a lot of their own fans with them. The German band played symphonic metal with two singers and the lyrics varied from medieval setting to power metal and everyday life. However, they didn’t really fit in tonight’s line-up and their life performance was noncomittal. Maybe there were just too many people on stage, because they played a lot of instruments life. In sum, they were a good support act and one could see a lot of potencial, but AETERNITAS still have to work on both, uniqueness of their music and their performance.

The last single output from “A Leap Of Faith” was ‘Listen’, which was promoted with a lyric video. With this song, SEASON OF GHOSTS started their gig and continued chronologically with ‘How the story ends’. For me, the songs belong together, because – as you might know from the podcast – ‘Listen’ is a song about other people who don’t listen to somebody’s needs, so this person decides to go away – that’s how the story ends. Both songs are not easy to sing and so right from the start it was clear that SEASON OF GHOSTS are on a different level regarding their skills. Sophia did a really good job on the microphone and managed to sing all the different styles even on stage without loosing quality.

It was easy to see that the musicians were hungry to go on stage and perform their songs life – they had so much fun and that motivated the audience. Especially Sophia and Sam talked a lot with the fans made jokes. Also bass player Paul Dark Brown is a brilliant life musician with a great performance. SEASON OF GHOSTS also played songs from their former album “The Human Paradox” – ‘Genesis’, ‘Time Travellers’ and ‘Dream;Paralysis’ – but also of course the other singles from their recent album, ‘A Leap Of Faith’ and ‘A Place To Call Home’.

Some people in the audience might have asked themselves how they know Sophia. The answer comes with the last song of the set, ‘Stargazer’ from her former band Blood Stain Child. After the gig, Sophia went to the merch booth to meet people and sign CDs – and to lead us to the backstage where we then had our interview with her and Zombie Sam.

Interview with SEASON OF GHOSTS:

To be honest, I don’t know much about JUPITER. A lot of people went crazy during the gig and celebrated the Japanese band. Their Power Metal to me sounds very European, also the vocals which were perfectly clear and powerful. There was a great party on stage with a lot of new songs from theis album “Zeus”. Of course, the costumes were different from what we are used to – the band had a kind of manga style. Especially their performace was good – they posed a lot but very naturally and also had a lot of fun on stage. Right after the gig, they went to the merch booth and a lot of fans followed to get their stuff signed and to take pictures with the band.